Listened to an interesting interview this morning with the author of a new book, The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race. There was a lot to agree with and disagree with, but it rang true in many ways for me because I have had a fair number of students with roots in the Philippines. An early portion of the interview illustrates an important dynamic. The author himself has parents from the Philippines and when his university was running a study on alcohol consumption and those of “Asian” ancestry. When he approached to be a participant though the researchers said that what they were looking for were people of Japanese, Korean and Chinese ancestry, because they had the right “population structure.”

Naturally this was somewhat offensive. The author pointed that as a sociologist he believes race is a “social construct.” It is also the case that people from the Philippines occupy a someone liminal position of both “Asian” and “Latino” identities. As a South Asian I can relate, as I am “Asian”, but not “typically” Asian.

From what I can gather the research group was rather artless in the way they communicated their necessary conditions for their project, but the researchers probably were correct in excluding the author.Alcohol flush reaction segregates in only a finite set of East Asians. With limited resources it is rational for them to exclude individuals from populations where the variants of interest are not present, or at very low frequencies.

The problem is that the author confuses the terminology, “Asian”, with reality. A common tendency in the “post-modern” style of thought is putting primacy in the power of language to shape our perception of reality. The fact is that people from the Philippines have very distinct genetic structure in relation to Northeast Asians. Whether they are categorized as Asian or Latino does not truly impact that fact, unless one is of Chinese background and from the Philippines. To me it is ironic that so many scholars place into language so much power when language is only an imperfect mapping onto reality.

Somebody should do a factor analysis to determine which groups are separate races.

The populations grouped together under certain terms for races are often quite different from each other. An example is "black" for sub-Saharan African peoples, even though they comprise at least four races: West Africans (sprinters), East Africans (marathoners), pygmies (like in the Ituri forest) and bushmen (see "The Gods Must Be Crazy").

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So he only chose to be offended at the use of race as a biological category after he was rejected, not before he applied?

Good point!

Somebody should do a factor analysis to determine which groups are separate races.

The populations grouped together under certain terms for races are often quite different from each other. An example is “black” for sub-Saharan African peoples, even though they comprise at least four races: West Africans (sprinters), East Africans (marathoners), pygmies (like in the Ituri forest) and bushmen (see “The Gods Must Be Crazy”).

Somebody should do a factor analysis to determine which groups are separate races.

The populations grouped together under certain terms for races are often quite different from each other. An example is "black" for sub-Saharan African peoples, even though they comprise at least four races: West Africans (sprinters), East Africans (marathoners), pygmies (like in the Ituri forest) and bushmen (see "The Gods Must Be Crazy").

That’s no way of determining “races”.

Any set of clusters will ultimately be arbitrary as there is no objective method to decide a cut-off point.

"Any set of clusters will ultimately be arbitrary as there is no objective method to decide a cut-off point".

The human population, like that of most species, varies across its range, forming a series of clines with the most different-looking populations usually at the geographic margins. The classification of most groups of species is likewise often arbitrary, with no objective method to decide a cut-off point. So what you are proposing is a negation of the whole biological classification system.

The only reason anybody has ever cared about denying the existence of race is that it provides a way to deny, a priori, even the possibility of significant differences between different "racial" groups -- differences between blacks and whites in particular, and, above all, intellectual differences. This folk understanding of the statement "there is no such thing as race" effectively is the denial of population structure! If this weren't so, the statement would be useless as a weapon in the war against racism, and nobody would bother to argue it one way or the other.

To me it is ironic that so many scholars place into language so much power when language is only an imperfect mapping onto reality.

I think the power of language comes *because* it’s an imperfect mapping to reality. It’s the imperfections that instruct us (as children/students etc.) to interpret reality a certain way and not another… if language were able to map reality perfectly it wouldn’t have the power of socialisation that it does.

To me it is ironic that so many scholars place into language so much power when language is only an imperfect mapping onto reality.

I think the power of language comes *because* it's an imperfect mapping to reality. It's the imperfections that instruct us (as children/students etc.) to interpret reality a certain way and not another... if language were able to map reality perfectly it wouldn't have the power of socialisation that it does.

Weird hypothesis. I don’t agree.

I agree though that the ambiguity and imperfectness is inherent to language because of the nature of the universe we inhabit.

Stating that there is no purely objective way of determining what and how many 'races' there are isn't the same as denying population structure.

The only reason anybody has ever cared about denying the existence of race is that it provides a way to deny, a priori, even the possibility of significant differences between different “racial” groups — differences between blacks and whites in particular, and, above all, intellectual differences. This folk understanding of the statement “there is no such thing as race” effectively is the denial of population structure! If this weren’t so, the statement would be useless as a weapon in the war against racism, and nobody would bother to argue it one way or the other.

The only reason anybody has ever cared about denying the existence of race is that it provides a way to deny, a priori, even the possibility of significant differences between different “racial” groups

Even as hyperbole, this claim is false. People have often denied the existence of race to deny discontinuities. (Take the "one drop rule.")

Population structure is real. "Race" is ambiguous. Only people who enjoy confusion trade in ambiguities.

I’m trying to get my head around this: he considered that he was qualified to be a candidate for the study because he had Asian ancestry (presumably by geography), but then was offended because he was excluded by virtue of not having NE Asian ancestry (which can also be identified by geography, if you ignore the southern Chinese diaspora), arguing that race is a ‘social construct’ (committing yet again the egregious offence of turning a verb into a noun). So by his argument ‘Asian’ is not a population substructural category, it is geographical, but any division of Asian into substructural categories is not real, and not geographical either, it is a social construction.

I don’t get it.

Incidentally, I have a lot of contact with Filipinos, or more correctly mostly but not all Filipinas, and they would all be deeply offended by being labelled as ‘Latinos’.

Yes, I thought it rather strange that Razib chose to use that term as in, "people from the Philippines occupy a someone liminal position of both “Asian” and “Latino' identities". Certainly any 'Latino' element would be minimal. The Philippines do have a reasonably large 'East Asian', and from more than just the result of the Austronesians having passed through. But what was the earlier population? The Philippines are extremely interesting in relation to the human crossing of Wallace's Line. The islands certainly do not appear to have been on the route between SE Asia and Australia/New Guinea yet one would expect the easiest crossing would have been that between Palawan and the Philippines proper. Presumably the early Filipinos were similar to one or both of those more southerly populations though.

As a result, in effect Razib's sentence should probably read: "people from the Philippines occupy a someone liminal position of both “Asian” and “Papuan/Australian' identities".

"Incidentally, I have a lot of contact with Filipinos, or more correctly mostly but not all Filipinas, and they would all be deeply offended by being labelled as ‘Latinos’."

I suspect that depends on where/in what social circle they are located. If they are in the better universities (student OR faculty) or in the liberal media, they are almost certainly very happy to be labeled Latino (they may not have heard of it, but when and if they do, it will make sense to them).

On the other hand, if you are partying with nurses or any other group of "ordinary Filipinos", then yes, my sense is that they would be surprised, at least mildly offended, and certainly not delighted. This may change if they went to one of the better universities for higher education.

Had a girlfriend from Philippines. She didn’t speak Spanish although there were a few Spanish words (days of week for instance) in her vocabulary. There was a lot of trade between Spain’s colonies in the New World (mostly Silver for Asian goods) but I wasn’t under the impression that the contacts went all that deep. So is it dark skin + Spanish colony that makes them Latino? Is it a U.S.-only phenomena because they are excluded from the Asian grouping?

There were actually deeper cultural contacts between the Philippines and Mexico than the Philippines and Spain, as they were alongside each other on the Spanish global trade routes. This is why Philippine Spanish and the Chavacano creole language are based upon Mexican Spanish and even have some words borrowed from Nahuatl. This is also probably why some Mexicans have fractional East Asian ancestry today, although colonial Mexico also had a Chinese community which may have contributed.

You are right that the cult around him is quite unseemly; and he didn't really have a system. But your own thinking seems to have evolved a bit. And his basic argument that language is a social game; that semantics *is* the particular social game played in a particular instance using a particular set of utterances, that there is no intrinsic to words, is still true and still ignored by mainstream rationalist social science.

After Xunzi and after your recent epiphanies about how political arguments really aren't about facts I do think you might appreciate what he was getting on to. You don't need to like his lifestyle but you'll give him he had a point that it's all bullshit.

Had a girlfriend from Philippines. She didn't speak Spanish although there were a few Spanish words (days of week for instance) in her vocabulary. There was a lot of trade between Spain's colonies in the New World (mostly Silver for Asian goods) but I wasn't under the impression that the contacts went all that deep. So is it dark skin + Spanish colony that makes them Latino? Is it a U.S.-only phenomena because they are excluded from the Asian grouping?

There were actually deeper cultural contacts between the Philippines and Mexico than the Philippines and Spain, as they were alongside each other on the Spanish global trade routes. This is why Philippine Spanish and the Chavacano creole language are based upon Mexican Spanish and even have some words borrowed from Nahuatl. This is also probably why some Mexicans have fractional East Asian ancestry today, although colonial Mexico also had a Chinese community which may have contributed.

There were actually deeper cultural contacts between the Philippines and Mexico than the Philippines and Spain, as they were alongside each other on the Spanish global trade routes. This is why Philippine Spanish and the Chavacano creole language are based upon Mexican Spanish and even have some words borrowed from Nahuatl.

There is a sort of parallel to this in Coptic and Russian. Both languages have alphabets based on Greek, but have characters that are not of Greek origin. Among them, the Coptic letter "shay" is derived from Demotic Egyptian and ultimately from hieroglyphics. In the Cyrillic alphabet the letter Щ is also not of Greek origin, has a similar appearance, and represents a similar (š) sound.

You are right that the cult around him is quite unseemly; and he didn’t really have a system. But your own thinking seems to have evolved a bit. And his basic argument that language is a social game; that semantics *is* the particular social game played in a particular instance using a particular set of utterances, that there is no intrinsic to words, is still true and still ignored by mainstream rationalist social science.

After Xunzi and after your recent epiphanies about how political arguments really aren’t about facts I do think you might appreciate what he was getting on to. You don’t need to like his lifestyle but you’ll give him he had a point that it’s all bullshit.

You are right that the cult around him is quite unseemly; and he didn't really have a system. But your own thinking seems to have evolved a bit. And his basic argument that language is a social game; that semantics *is* the particular social game played in a particular instance using a particular set of utterances, that there is no intrinsic to words, is still true and still ignored by mainstream rationalist social science.

After Xunzi and after your recent epiphanies about how political arguments really aren't about facts I do think you might appreciate what he was getting on to. You don't need to like his lifestyle but you'll give him he had a point that it's all bullshit.

re: "The problem is that the author confuses the terminology, “Asian”, with reality."

Based on the relevant passage, the problem isn't simply semiotic. The guy imagines that there is no possible biological justification for exclusion. And so he infers that the researchers are imposing their cultural sense of "Asian-ness" (as opposed to specifying a subset of "Asians" for some pragmatic population genetic reason).

...“But I’m Filipino. Your flyer said it wanted Asian American participants.”“Yes, but we need a genetically similar sample.”“You’ve got to be kidding me.”“No, I’m sorry.”I knew the genetics argument was bogus. Anyone who’s taken introduction to Sociology knows that race is a social construction, not a genetic one. People, not biology, determine the meaning of racial categories. Besides, there is a consensus within the scientific community that with respects to genetics, “all human beings, regardless of race, are 99.9 percent the same.” Even though I had science on my side, the coordinator wouldn’t budge. By her definition, I wasn’t Asian American. I hung up the phone without bothering to say good-bye. …But this wasn’t the main issue. What upset me most was that a researcher from a top university felt at liberty to exclude Filipinos from a study about Asians Americans. This researcher had no idea what she was talking about. Besides the plethora of scientific articles that have debunked the relationship between race and genetics. I also had the history books on my side. Any Asian Americans historian can tell you that Filipinos played a central role in the creation of Asian identity… Although I was angry, I wasn’t entirely surprised. For all intents and purposes, there are many out there who forget that Filipinos are, in fact, Asian American. ...

The real story here is that he doesn't question his strong constructionist interpretation, but assumes rather that the genetic researchers are the ones who are wrong.

If you have to preserve a blank-slate anthropology for political reasons, and you don’t have Stalin to purge politically incorrect biologists, then in the face of mounds of scientific evidence, what better place to hide out than in linguistic relativism?

I'm trying to get my head around this: he considered that he was qualified to be a candidate for the study because he had Asian ancestry (presumably by geography), but then was offended because he was excluded by virtue of not having NE Asian ancestry (which can also be identified by geography, if you ignore the southern Chinese diaspora), arguing that race is a 'social construct' (committing yet again the egregious offence of turning a verb into a noun). So by his argument 'Asian' is not a population substructural category, it is geographical, but any division of Asian into substructural categories is not real, and not geographical either, it is a social construction.

I don't get it.

Incidentally, I have a lot of contact with Filipinos, or more correctly mostly but not all Filipinas, and they would all be deeply offended by being labelled as 'Latinos'.

“they would all be deeply offended by being labelled as ‘Latinos’”.

Yes, I thought it rather strange that Razib chose to use that term as in, “people from the Philippines occupy a someone liminal position of both “Asian” and “Latino’ identities”. Certainly any ‘Latino’ element would be minimal. The Philippines do have a reasonably large ‘East Asian’, and from more than just the result of the Austronesians having passed through. But what was the earlier population? The Philippines are extremely interesting in relation to the human crossing of Wallace’s Line. The islands certainly do not appear to have been on the route between SE Asia and Australia/New Guinea yet one would expect the easiest crossing would have been that between Palawan and the Philippines proper. Presumably the early Filipinos were similar to one or both of those more southerly populations though.

As a result, in effect Razib’s sentence should probably read: “people from the Philippines occupy a someone liminal position of both “Asian” and “Papuan/Australian’ identities”.

Any set of clusters will ultimately be arbitrary as there is no objective method to decide a cut-off point.

“Any set of clusters will ultimately be arbitrary as there is no objective method to decide a cut-off point”.

The human population, like that of most species, varies across its range, forming a series of clines with the most different-looking populations usually at the geographic margins. The classification of most groups of species is likewise often arbitrary, with no objective method to decide a cut-off point. So what you are proposing is a negation of the whole biological classification system.

re: “The problem is that the author confuses the terminology, “Asian”, with reality.”

Based on the relevant passage, the problem isn’t simply semiotic. The guy imagines that there is no possible biological justification for exclusion. And so he infers that the researchers are imposing their cultural sense of “Asian-ness” (as opposed to specifying a subset of “Asians” for some pragmatic population genetic reason).

…
“But I’m Filipino. Your flyer said it wanted Asian American participants.”“Yes, but we need a genetically similar sample.”“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No, I’m sorry.”I knew the genetics argument was bogus. Anyone who’s taken introduction to Sociology knows that race is a social construction, not a genetic one. People, not biology, determine the meaning of racial categories. Besides, there is a consensus within the scientific community that with respects to genetics, “all human beings, regardless of race, are 99.9 percent the same.” Even though I had science on my side, the coordinator wouldn’t budge. By her definition, I wasn’t Asian American. I hung up the phone without bothering to say good-bye.
…But this wasn’t the main issue. What upset me most was that a researcher from a top university felt at liberty to exclude Filipinos from a study about Asians Americans. This researcher had no idea what she was talking about. Besides the plethora of scientific articles that have debunked the relationship between race and genetics. I also had the history books on my side. Any Asian Americans historian can tell you that Filipinos played a central role in the creation of Asian identity… Although I was angry, I wasn’t entirely surprised. For all intents and purposes, there are many out there who forget that Filipinos are, in fact, Asian American.
…

The real story here is that he doesn’t question his strong constructionist interpretation, but assumes rather that the genetic researchers are the ones who are wrong.

The dude is used to using the term in his social science milieu, where it generally includes Southeast Asians, and he assumed that the scientists on that study used the term in the same way. "Asian" is not a racial category, it's a word, and different groups use words in different ways.

In a sense they were sloppy, they could have just asked for "people of Northeast Asian heritage", and he wouldn't have had an excuse to do this tantrum. Western people should be more aware of the need of Rectifying Names.

re: "The problem is that the author confuses the terminology, “Asian”, with reality."

Based on the relevant passage, the problem isn't simply semiotic. The guy imagines that there is no possible biological justification for exclusion. And so he infers that the researchers are imposing their cultural sense of "Asian-ness" (as opposed to specifying a subset of "Asians" for some pragmatic population genetic reason).

...“But I’m Filipino. Your flyer said it wanted Asian American participants.”“Yes, but we need a genetically similar sample.”“You’ve got to be kidding me.”“No, I’m sorry.”I knew the genetics argument was bogus. Anyone who’s taken introduction to Sociology knows that race is a social construction, not a genetic one. People, not biology, determine the meaning of racial categories. Besides, there is a consensus within the scientific community that with respects to genetics, “all human beings, regardless of race, are 99.9 percent the same.” Even though I had science on my side, the coordinator wouldn’t budge. By her definition, I wasn’t Asian American. I hung up the phone without bothering to say good-bye. …But this wasn’t the main issue. What upset me most was that a researcher from a top university felt at liberty to exclude Filipinos from a study about Asians Americans. This researcher had no idea what she was talking about. Besides the plethora of scientific articles that have debunked the relationship between race and genetics. I also had the history books on my side. Any Asian Americans historian can tell you that Filipinos played a central role in the creation of Asian identity… Although I was angry, I wasn’t entirely surprised. For all intents and purposes, there are many out there who forget that Filipinos are, in fact, Asian American. ...

The real story here is that he doesn't question his strong constructionist interpretation, but assumes rather that the genetic researchers are the ones who are wrong.

The dude is used to using the term in his social science milieu, where it generally includes Southeast Asians, and he assumed that the scientists on that study used the term in the same way. “Asian” is not a racial category, it’s a word, and different groups use words in different ways.

In a sense they were sloppy, they could have just asked for “people of Northeast Asian heritage”, and he wouldn’t have had an excuse to do this tantrum. Western people should be more aware of the need of Rectifying Names.

The problem becomes clearer when you read the relevant passage in the book. The author is not (simply) "confus[ing] the terminology, “Asian”, with reality", but is oblivious to the empirical reality. He firmly believes that there is no genetic justification for subsetting "Asians" (in the way the researchers do); and he thinks his view is well supported by research. With this prior in mind, he infers that the geneticists are just rationalizing their particular social stereotype-based delineation of Asian-ness (qua oriental). If my reading is correct, he would probably also have thought it odd if the researchers initially specified “Asians, but only of Northeast heritage”, since, again, he would see no biological justification for the specification.

The dude is used to using the term in his social science milieu, where it generally includes Southeast Asians, and he assumed that the scientists on that study used the term in the same way. "Asian" is not a racial category, it's a word, and different groups use words in different ways.

In a sense they were sloppy, they could have just asked for "people of Northeast Asian heritage", and he wouldn't have had an excuse to do this tantrum. Western people should be more aware of the need of Rectifying Names.

The problem becomes clearer when you read the relevant passage in the book. The author is not (simply) “confus[ing] the terminology, “Asian”, with reality”, but is oblivious to the empirical reality. He firmly believes that there is no genetic justification for subsetting “Asians” (in the way the researchers do); and he thinks his view is well supported by research. With this prior in mind, he infers that the geneticists are just rationalizing their particular social stereotype-based delineation of Asian-ness (qua oriental). If my reading is correct, he would probably also have thought it odd if the researchers initially specified “Asians, but only of Northeast heritage”, since, again, he would see no biological justification for the specification.

I'm trying to get my head around this: he considered that he was qualified to be a candidate for the study because he had Asian ancestry (presumably by geography), but then was offended because he was excluded by virtue of not having NE Asian ancestry (which can also be identified by geography, if you ignore the southern Chinese diaspora), arguing that race is a 'social construct' (committing yet again the egregious offence of turning a verb into a noun). So by his argument 'Asian' is not a population substructural category, it is geographical, but any division of Asian into substructural categories is not real, and not geographical either, it is a social construction.

I don't get it.

Incidentally, I have a lot of contact with Filipinos, or more correctly mostly but not all Filipinas, and they would all be deeply offended by being labelled as 'Latinos'.

“Incidentally, I have a lot of contact with Filipinos, or more correctly mostly but not all Filipinas, and they would all be deeply offended by being labelled as ‘Latinos’.”

I suspect that depends on where/in what social circle they are located. If they are in the better universities (student OR faculty) or in the liberal media, they are almost certainly very happy to be labeled Latino (they may not have heard of it, but when and if they do, it will make sense to them).

On the other hand, if you are partying with nurses or any other group of “ordinary Filipinos”, then yes, my sense is that they would be surprised, at least mildly offended, and certainly not delighted. This may change if they went to one of the better universities for higher education.

I don't 'party' with anyone. And I'm sorry, but I just don't believe you, and don't take your word for anything. The Filipinos I am on very familiar terms with include highly educated people, and I have also been to the Philippines on numerous occasions. Because Filipinos almost universally speak a reasonable standard of English, and tend to be quite open and friendly, it is not difficult to engage them in fairly deep conversation.

My overwhelming sense is that they are strongly and proudly Pinoy (or Pinay in the case of females), very nationalistic, and with a strong sense of resentment of their colonial past. At times when I have raised the subject of Spanish inheritance in the Philippines, they uniformly become defensive and evince distaste for it. Some even become quite aggressive in condemning and rejecting it. I have learned from experience not to mention it. And they obviously regard themselves as 'Asian', in whatever sense that is intended.

This might well change for 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation Filipinos when they migrate to the USA and where they might choose to align themselves with Hispanics, for lack of another group they can ally themselves with. I don't know anything about that. I'm certain that Chinese Americans will not recognise Filipino Americans as 'same', unless they happen to be genetically and culturally Chinese.

Your tone is elitist and deprecating. Don't bother commenting to me again unless you have something more than your own suspicions to go on.

"Incidentally, I have a lot of contact with Filipinos, or more correctly mostly but not all Filipinas, and they would all be deeply offended by being labelled as ‘Latinos’."

I suspect that depends on where/in what social circle they are located. If they are in the better universities (student OR faculty) or in the liberal media, they are almost certainly very happy to be labeled Latino (they may not have heard of it, but when and if they do, it will make sense to them).

On the other hand, if you are partying with nurses or any other group of "ordinary Filipinos", then yes, my sense is that they would be surprised, at least mildly offended, and certainly not delighted. This may change if they went to one of the better universities for higher education.

I don’t ‘party’ with anyone. And I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe you, and don’t take your word for anything. The Filipinos I am on very familiar terms with include highly educated people, and I have also been to the Philippines on numerous occasions. Because Filipinos almost universally speak a reasonable standard of English, and tend to be quite open and friendly, it is not difficult to engage them in fairly deep conversation.

My overwhelming sense is that they are strongly and proudly Pinoy (or Pinay in the case of females), very nationalistic, and with a strong sense of resentment of their colonial past. At times when I have raised the subject of Spanish inheritance in the Philippines, they uniformly become defensive and evince distaste for it. Some even become quite aggressive in condemning and rejecting it. I have learned from experience not to mention it. And they obviously regard themselves as ‘Asian’, in whatever sense that is intended.

This might well change for 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation Filipinos when they migrate to the USA and where they might choose to align themselves with Hispanics, for lack of another group they can ally themselves with. I don’t know anything about that. I’m certain that Chinese Americans will not recognise Filipino Americans as ‘same’, unless they happen to be genetically and culturally Chinese.

Your tone is elitist and deprecating. Don’t bother commenting to me again unless you have something more than your own suspicions to go on.

I shouldnt have said "party" and I apologize for that. also should not have been snarky, but the snark was not directed at you (or at Filipinos for that matter) but at the elite universities, where they will indeed learn to become Latino if they happen to pass through some of the more identity-friendly departments. I sincerely think you misunderstood me there.

I don't 'party' with anyone. And I'm sorry, but I just don't believe you, and don't take your word for anything. The Filipinos I am on very familiar terms with include highly educated people, and I have also been to the Philippines on numerous occasions. Because Filipinos almost universally speak a reasonable standard of English, and tend to be quite open and friendly, it is not difficult to engage them in fairly deep conversation.

My overwhelming sense is that they are strongly and proudly Pinoy (or Pinay in the case of females), very nationalistic, and with a strong sense of resentment of their colonial past. At times when I have raised the subject of Spanish inheritance in the Philippines, they uniformly become defensive and evince distaste for it. Some even become quite aggressive in condemning and rejecting it. I have learned from experience not to mention it. And they obviously regard themselves as 'Asian', in whatever sense that is intended.

This might well change for 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation Filipinos when they migrate to the USA and where they might choose to align themselves with Hispanics, for lack of another group they can ally themselves with. I don't know anything about that. I'm certain that Chinese Americans will not recognise Filipino Americans as 'same', unless they happen to be genetically and culturally Chinese.

Your tone is elitist and deprecating. Don't bother commenting to me again unless you have something more than your own suspicions to go on.

Most Filipinos I’ve met have been extremely intelligent. High educational attainment, great jobs, good amount of wealth accumulation.

I don't 'party' with anyone. And I'm sorry, but I just don't believe you, and don't take your word for anything. The Filipinos I am on very familiar terms with include highly educated people, and I have also been to the Philippines on numerous occasions. Because Filipinos almost universally speak a reasonable standard of English, and tend to be quite open and friendly, it is not difficult to engage them in fairly deep conversation.

My overwhelming sense is that they are strongly and proudly Pinoy (or Pinay in the case of females), very nationalistic, and with a strong sense of resentment of their colonial past. At times when I have raised the subject of Spanish inheritance in the Philippines, they uniformly become defensive and evince distaste for it. Some even become quite aggressive in condemning and rejecting it. I have learned from experience not to mention it. And they obviously regard themselves as 'Asian', in whatever sense that is intended.

This might well change for 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation Filipinos when they migrate to the USA and where they might choose to align themselves with Hispanics, for lack of another group they can ally themselves with. I don't know anything about that. I'm certain that Chinese Americans will not recognise Filipino Americans as 'same', unless they happen to be genetically and culturally Chinese.

Your tone is elitist and deprecating. Don't bother commenting to me again unless you have something more than your own suspicions to go on.

I shouldnt have said “party” and I apologize for that. also should not have been snarky, but the snark was not directed at you (or at Filipinos for that matter) but at the elite universities, where they will indeed learn to become Latino if they happen to pass through some of the more identity-friendly departments. I sincerely think you misunderstood me there.

The Philippines has a population of more than 100 million people. What % make it to the USA and get into elite universities, would you think?

A quirk of the Spanish occupation was that many Filipinos took Spanish names, despite having no Spanish ancestry at all. This can fool people. Evidently there are any number of identity friendly departments at elite American universities who are willing to be fooled.

I shouldnt have said "party" and I apologize for that. also should not have been snarky, but the snark was not directed at you (or at Filipinos for that matter) but at the elite universities, where they will indeed learn to become Latino if they happen to pass through some of the more identity-friendly departments. I sincerely think you misunderstood me there.

Apology accepted.

The Philippines has a population of more than 100 million people. What % make it to the USA and get into elite universities, would you think?

A quirk of the Spanish occupation was that many Filipinos took Spanish names, despite having no Spanish ancestry at all. This can fool people. Evidently there are any number of identity friendly departments at elite American universities who are willing to be fooled.

The Philippines are just part of a large archipelago that includes a lot of Malaysia and Indonesia. My understanding is that every part is a jigsaw puzzle of people’s and ethnicities that even the national languages Tagalog and Bahasa are just trade pidgins. Assuming those from Manila are the the same as Samar or Mindanao is a silly idea where the people’s are fractured strata with the overrun previous settlers being dislocated to a remote mountain valley or island unlike what happens when invaders settle a fertile plain and either absorb or destroy the predecessors.

The only reason anybody has ever cared about denying the existence of race is that it provides a way to deny, a priori, even the possibility of significant differences between different "racial" groups -- differences between blacks and whites in particular, and, above all, intellectual differences. This folk understanding of the statement "there is no such thing as race" effectively is the denial of population structure! If this weren't so, the statement would be useless as a weapon in the war against racism, and nobody would bother to argue it one way or the other.

The only reason anybody has ever cared about denying the existence of race is that it provides a way to deny, a priori, even the possibility of significant differences between different “racial” groups

Even as hyperbole, this claim is false. People have often denied the existence of race to deny discontinuities. (Take the “one drop rule.”)

Population structure is real. “Race” is ambiguous. Only people who enjoy confusion trade in ambiguities.

If Filipinos in the U.S. want to have a political identity other than “Asian”, it’s going to be “Filipino”. They’re not “Latino”, though a Filipino identity may have a similar relationship other identities as the “Latino” identity does.

Incidentally, many Filipinos in the U.S. have Spanish last names. My mother, who is a native speaker of Spanish, used to teach at a community college in an area with a large Filipino population. She would pronounce the Spanish names in correct Spanish. Several of her students would correct her, and say that’s how their grandparents pronounced the name, but that they pronounced it differently. Usually more Americanized.

Many Filipinos in the Philippines have Spanish or Spanish sounding last names. See what I said at 31 above, or just read "Philippines during Spanish rule" on Wikipedia. Some of this derived from a Spanish male ancestor. A lot more of it derived from Filipino adoption of Spanish sounding surnames, at Spanish colonial instigation, to stop all of them naming themselves after saints, etc. after conversion to Catholicism. A lot more Filipinos have surnames that are clearly not Spanish sounding - the frequency of those seems to increase as you go down the pecking order in terms of relative SES, but that's just a subjective impression.

There were actually deeper cultural contacts between the Philippines and Mexico than the Philippines and Spain, as they were alongside each other on the Spanish global trade routes. This is why Philippine Spanish and the Chavacano creole language are based upon Mexican Spanish and even have some words borrowed from Nahuatl. This is also probably why some Mexicans have fractional East Asian ancestry today, although colonial Mexico also had a Chinese community which may have contributed.

There were actually deeper cultural contacts between the Philippines and Mexico than the Philippines and Spain, as they were alongside each other on the Spanish global trade routes. This is why Philippine Spanish and the Chavacano creole language are based upon Mexican Spanish and even have some words borrowed from Nahuatl.

There is a sort of parallel to this in Coptic and Russian. Both languages have alphabets based on Greek, but have characters that are not of Greek origin. Among them, the Coptic letter “shay” is derived from Demotic Egyptian and ultimately from hieroglyphics. In the Cyrillic alphabet the letter Щ is also not of Greek origin, has a similar appearance, and represents a similar (š) sound.

If Filipinos in the U.S. want to have a political identity other than "Asian", it's going to be "Filipino". They're not "Latino", though a Filipino identity may have a similar relationship other identities as the "Latino" identity does.

Incidentally, many Filipinos in the U.S. have Spanish last names. My mother, who is a native speaker of Spanish, used to teach at a community college in an area with a large Filipino population. She would pronounce the Spanish names in correct Spanish. Several of her students would correct her, and say that's how their grandparents pronounced the name, but that they pronounced it differently. Usually more Americanized.

“many Filipinos in the U.S. have Spanish last names”

Many Filipinos in the Philippines have Spanish or Spanish sounding last names. See what I said at 31 above, or just read “Philippines during Spanish rule” on Wikipedia. Some of this derived from a Spanish male ancestor. A lot more of it derived from Filipino adoption of Spanish sounding surnames, at Spanish colonial instigation, to stop all of them naming themselves after saints, etc. after conversion to Catholicism. A lot more Filipinos have surnames that are clearly not Spanish sounding – the frequency of those seems to increase as you go down the pecking order in terms of relative SES, but that’s just a subjective impression.

There are records of Filipinos migrating to Mexico while saying there is an immigrant Chinese communty that has been there for sometime (usually Hakka by origin). The indigenous Mexican does has an East Asian ancestral background so in the end, the DNA trail would show accordingly